


The Broken Helm

by SathInflection



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Family, Healing, ToT: Monster Mash, Trick or Treat: Chocolate Box, Trick or Treat: Extra Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-09 06:00:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12270348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SathInflection/pseuds/SathInflection
Summary: What savor can there be for the warrior who has never known defeat, as she becomes old?





	The Broken Helm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gileonnen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/gifts).



At the age of fifty-eight, a good, round set of years, I did not think I wanted to live, and so I determined to die.

You must understand, littler one, that this was not a strictly Orcish thing. Most of us who go a-Orcing among the tuskless settle quietly back in our own lands, to farm and tell stories until death comes sweetly to our beds. But nothing could be sweet to me, so I did not return. Perhaps the peculiarity of my human father called me to spill my blood in his homeland, rather than to remain a stranger in my own.

I thought death would come roaring to me when I saw the champion’s helm. Yes, the one encrusted with gems that catch the morning light like a star. It was truly beautiful before I put the dent in it. The champion fought well, but you know how I am. As the champion staggered, body not yet understanding its ruined brain, I was asked a question:

“Will thou remember me?”

“I will remember your helm,” I replied.

“Good enough,” the champion said, kneeling now. “Thou would be surprised at the perspective gained when thy life is spilling from thy finest possession.”

The battle went on. I did not. I took the helm in my hands and left the field, considering the champion’s words. My people do not go a-Orcing because we crave gold; we go because our crops are often blighted, and the treasures of the tuskless make for good trade along every coast, among peoples you would find more monstrous than me. I did not understand how the champion’s helm could be so precious. But I felt I should bring the helm back to its maker, so the champion might be better remembered.

As you know, the helm had been crafted in the style of Wend—your people. My journey was timed badly, which suited me. I suffered the desert in summer, and the mountains in winter. To die on a quest is honorable, but I lost no more than the tips of my ears to frostbite. I came to Wend starving and senseless, unable to tell the guards at the gate my own name.

“I know that helm,” your mother said, seeing it tied to my belt, along with the withered seven scalps of my most famed enemies. There had been eight, the lucky number, until I ate one in desperation.

“It was the champion’s,” I replied, taking the helm into my hands. “The champion died well.”

Your mother, the Greatsmith of Wend, made me her guest. The champion had been her sibling, and the helm her making, but she did not begrudge me the separation of kin from craft.   

“As you said, the champion died well,” she said when I asked her why she had welcomed her sibling’s murderer into her home. “Why have you come here?”

“I want to die an honorable death, but I keep living.”

“Well,” she replied, with that smile she wears when she is sad, “good deaths do not come to Wend. We are beset by a monster—bigger than you—and our greatest warrior left for glory.”

“Let me recover my strength, and I will fight for Wend.”

The monster was not so terrible a battle. I have slain basilisks, and giants, and the cruel Harper of Crescent Isle. Wend is a kind land, and your people prefer craft to killing. A monster with poisonous blood is not so much to me. After, your mother did not ask me to leave. She had another trial, a band of raiders who had waylaid a salt caravan. And then a task which could have been done by anyone, helping her seed the garden. I found in sitting at her table and eating the food we had grown together that I had not enjoyed my years of loneliness. You healed me as well, when you returned from learning the weaver’s trade and told us of all that passed in the workshop, every shifting alliance and art.

Here is where my tale becomes ordinary. I hope that you do not find this part worth telling, only a little thing for your storyteller’s gift, for I have abandoned my search for death. It has not strayed far from me, as Wend’s new champion, but I fight to return to your mother, our garden, and the love we have tended as carefully as any growing thing.

The dented helm we keep in the hall, so that we do not forget why I came.   

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Havisham for the beta!


End file.
